Craft brewer Green Flash’s Cellar 3 series hits Houston shelves soon.
Would a beer by any other name taste as sweet? Or, in the case of the new Baroque Belgique from Green Flash Brewing Co., as funky?
Fans of the San Diego brewery and its Cellar 3 series (greenflashbrew.com/ cellar3) will answer yes enthusiastically. Anyone else who enjoys wild-fermented beers or has been intrigued by the growing interest in sours should give it a try as well.
Baroque Belgique, a Belgian-style pale ale sold in corked, 750 ml bottles, is scheduled to land on Houston store shelves toward the end of this month or in early February. A pair of sample bottles of this new yearround offering arrived at the Chronicle recently.
Those familiar with Green Flash Rayon Vert may feel a sense of déjà vu.
Rayon Vert made its debut in 2012 and was billed as a “continuously evolving” brew. The bottle-conditioned beer was made with Brettanomyces, giving it a tartness that generated positive reviews on the major beer-rating sites.
Yet it stayed in production for just two years. What made the beer “very risky to make,” according to Green Flash spokeswoman Natalie McCain, is the wild Brett yeast strain’s potential to infect other parts of the operation.
But a couple of years ago, Green Flash opened a separate production facility called Cellar 3 that specializes in rare and barrel-aged beers “where we can better control our wild yeasts,” McCain explained via email.
That facility now produces a variety of Belgianinspired fare under the Cellar 3 brand.
At 7 percent alcohol by volume, Baroque Belgique is less potent than other new Cellar 3 releases Divine Belgique (8.5 percent ABV, formerly released as Trippel) and Ideal Belgique (9.1 percent ABV, formerly Grand Cru).
I’m hardly alone in enjoying all the new beers billed as tart, sour, funky or wild (including the excellent Tenebra Aeterna, a barrelaged sour porter from Texas’ own Real Ale Brewing).
But I also understand that such flavor descriptions can be hard for the uninitiated to wrap their heads around.
Here’s how it was put to me several years ago: Though our body’s natural reaction to something sour is to spit it out, once you realize a wild-fermented beer is not going to be fatal you open yourself up to an exciting new range of flavors.
So make it a new year’s resolution and go wild out there.